Universe-shaking collision of black hole and neutron star could upend our understanding of monster cosmic mergers

A black hole and a neutron star, both black spheres with one having an orange series of circles around them circle each other against a starry background. The neutron star’s path is shown in blue with larger circles and the black hole’s motion in orange as the two objects orbit each other.

The universe-shaking collision of a black hole and a neutron star just led astronomers to a strange type of orbital interaction never seen before, and it's forcing them to rethink their theories.

Before the two extremely dense objects crashed and combined, they first swooped around each other in an eccentric, oval shape resembling the swirls of a Spirograph, scientists reported March 11 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.